19/40 - Kissed Dating Goodbye

There are few books that have had such an adverse impact on my life than the book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris. I read this book in high school and it follows the author's decision to never kiss or date a girl unless he knew he wanted to marry her. He said that in order to remain "pure" he had to abstain from even dating or spending any time with a girl one on one.

The book was recommended by a lot of people who were authority figures in my life so I read it and, as I do with almost anything in my life at that time, I went all-in on the suggested course of action.

In hindsight, I can see how many relationships I messed up, how many opportunities for real connections I missed, and how out of whack all of my understandings of the physical and sexual pieces of relationships were built on the smallest sliver of understanding.

It has taken me four days to get back to writing this blog.

The opening couple paragraphs really derailed me on my quest to write one blog each day up until my birthday.  I wrote this the same day that I was confirming details for my upcoming wedding while attending another friend's wedding in Los Angeles. There was a lot of time to think about love and my history with it.

It consumed so much of my time that I dedicated yesterday's therapy session entirely to it and we didn't finish the exploration. It might get a second week.

The things that I have wrestled with while thinking about how to share this lesson have ranged from sadness to anger to regret to eventually gratitude.

• Sadness that this was such a taboo subject in my formative years and that instead of talking through the magic and mystery of love and how the physical components are a special part of that, it was just a "do not touch" label.
• Anger that it took me until almost 40 to find my own peace and understanding with how I want to show up for my lover and how important all aspects of love are.
• Regret that I stayed in relationships way too long because I didn't know more of what was out there in the world and what I needed in a partner and naively resigned myself to "welp, this is all there is for me."
• Gratitude that I have gone on this journey over the past six years to explore, understand, test and learn, and eventually find the way that I can love and be loved without shame, without secrets, and without wondering "what else is there?"

I know so many other kids that I grew up with that went absolutely wild, in a lot of cases with each other, in secret and shame the moment they went to college. I know a lot of other kids that I grew up with that are in loveless marriage now and have no idea that there was ever something else available to them. I know some people that are incredibly happy that they found their person on the first try, but those are very much the exception and not the rule.

This lesson learned caught me off guard, but it has opened a whole slew of curiosities that I hope to continue to explore as I continue to chase down the truest form of love and all its components.